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When you need a repairman, you need a repairman. But it can be scary to invite a complete stranger into your home for hours. On top of that, you’re giving the person a look at the inside of your home, including any valuables you may have.

That’s why it’s important for homeowners to know with whom they’re doing business and take appropriate precautions. Still and all, a Memphis homeowner got an unexpected and unwelcome return visit from a workman who had previously been on the property…this time at about 9:30 p.m.

localmepmhis.com has the story . . .

A man who had done repair work on a home in Memphis returned to that residence and then was shot, according to the Memphis Police Department (MPD). 

MPD said they responded to the scene at nearly 10 p.m. after a shooting call and pronounced one man dead on the scene. MPD said they detained one individual. 

The detained individual was no doubt the home owner. Upon further investigation, he was found to have been a case of reasonable self-defense.

All’s well that ends well. Still, examples like this aren’t good advertisements for calling Old Lonely, the Maytag repair man when your appliance needs some help.

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61 COMMENTS

    • On the rare occasion I’ve had a tech or repairman at my residence, I’ve always informed them before entry that I would be takng photos of their face, vehicle, and LPN. All of them understood except one, who was hesitant. I refused him entry, called the company’s dispatch, and was informed he was a *former* employee who had contact with a buddy in the company and was offering a “finders fee” to get first crack at new customers.

      I dismissed both companies. Always keep your guard up when lettng someone into your home, and always close the doors to all rooms not needed for the issue at hand.

      • I agree totally.
        I had a Friend who repaired high end exercise equipment.
        He went to a giant house, a woman let him, in took him to the workout room.
        Ask how long he would be working, then said she was going to shower & woud be back to check on him. She returned fully dressed & her hair up in a towel. He never saw any other person, it was mid day & she acted like they knew each other. Thank God he is a good person.

    • “Hey Mr. Smith, I came back after 9 PM like you said to pick up the money you owed me for that roof repair, hello?… “

      POW!!!

      …I save more money on home repairs that way, times are tough all over for us homeowners…

  2. A cursory view of the news from Memphis this week will reveal that this story is just one of multiple incidents of lawlessness and home invasion.

  3. Kudos to the homeowner and for the local law folk for recognizing this was justifiable self-defense.

    On the exceedingly rare occasions that I need a mechanic (I do almost everything myself), I police that person carefully, monitoring his activity and movement. By the time he leaves, he knows I am vigilant.

    • I wanted the jerk who did plumbing work for us to return last year. He did not. But he knew I was armed as he inadvertently saw my gat. Not that I live like a king…careful what you let in your home!

        • Yes, but unfortunately the message to some of them is “this home has guns, just what I’m looking for. I’ll get some of my buddies and we’ll come back later and steal them.”

        • Booger, that is right. There doesn’t seem to be any “perfect” plan but some good ideas:
          Limit any stranger’s movements.
          Don’t leave any valuables in eye view.
          Surely there are others.

        • Typically they’ll watch until no one is home then break in. At least the “smart” criminals do, to avoid being shot.

  4. There was a car stereo installation tech who was making copies of customers’ car keys. He would pay them a visit and steal the stereo he installed.

  5. Given the quality and cost involved, maybe homeowners should shoot repairmen before they do the repairs.

  6. Where I used to live, a homeowner returned home mid evening to find his garage door open and a strange van in the driveway. Since there had been a series of burglaries in the area and he expected his teenage daughter to be home alone, he entered the house to check on her. He came across two men and demanded, “What the hell’s going on here?” One of them replied, “You know what the hell’s going on,” and advanced on him with a large pair of tin snips in his hand. The homeowner shot him. When his partner also advanced on the homeowner, he shot him, too. At that point the daughter appeared and exclaimed, “Daddy! You just shot the appliance delivery men!” Without telling her husband, the homeowner’s wife had ordered replacements for their washer and dryer and insisted on same day installation even though it would have to be after normal business hours.

    A criminal defense lawyer told this story during a class he was teaching on use of force law. He said the homeowner was put on trial for voluntary manslaughter. He didn’t tell us the verdict.

    • If your first instinct is to act confrontational with someone and approach them menacingly when YOU are a stranger in THEIR house, don’t be surprised if Bruce Springsteen never writes a song about your stupid dead ass.

    • that attorney has a good imagination.
      Advancing on the justifiably concerend homeowner with an edged weapon/tool in his hand was NOT the wise thing to do. When the first was shot, the second, were he innocent, should have instanly deescalated, complied, something siwer than attack Mr. armed Homeowner too.

      Teenage daughter SHOULD have spoken up sooner were this story accurate.

      Jury SHOULD have found no crime on part of homeowner. Two strangers in HIS home , no clear purpose, get aggressive…. homeowner being armed did what he felt ws necessary to take care of his home and family.

      Maybe the pplliance outfit will find installers with a bit more sense inside their crania. These guys sure did not have enough.

      If that had been me, tol in hand, seeing n armed and animted/hot man speaking sharply to me, I’d have dropped the tool in half a hertbeat, hands up looked down, and said DON”T SHOOT I’m here to install this machine”.
      Then if he shoots me dead the evidence will go against him hard. Homewoner should also have been issuing loud and very understandable orders to stand down, turn around, identfy yourselves, and state your reason for being here. BEFORE yanking on that bangswitch.
      I ain’t buying the “totally innocent” meme here on the part of the repair team.

      I’d like to sit down with Daughter and get a fully detailed report on HER story. Paperwrk from the appliance store, payment records, etc.

  7. This is a two-way street. Sometimes its about the person in the home and NOT the one there to repair something. When the homeowner tells you whats wrong then proceeds to take a shower, go back to bed, or even ends up having sex with someone in the next room…a repair man becomes a perfect target for all kinds of accusations. That’s not even to mention angry home owners that answer the door with gun in hand. But even under the best and most trust worthy circumstances, DO NOT leave your guns out in the open in the areas where they will be working. Particularly if your going to leave them alone for a while. Put away your guns, jewelry, cash, etc. for the duration of their presence in the home.

    Technicians and repair men are human too. Sometimes a tool might be left behind and they will have to come back.

    Far too many people will let just anyone into their home. There are plenty of people that are perfectly happy doing everything by app and grant entry to delivery people when no one else is there. People are also far to comfortable having strangers come in while there are ONLY children home. All of this just invites trouble.

    • Prndll,

      I was thinking about a possible scenario along the same line of thinking.

      A “lonely” woman invites the repairman to come back in the evening for drinks and potentially a romp in the sack. The repairman returns without even the slightest inkling of doing anything to the woman against her will. So the repairman returns, the woman invites him inside, and then the woman promptly shoots the repairman claiming that he entered her home without her permission–presumably to rape her.

      And that woman in that above scenario would get away with it, at least once anyway.

    • Even with benefit of the doubt that a repairman could leave behind equipment, how damn hard is it to just CALL the customer and ask when a good time would be to retrieve it?

  8. Poor guy only went back to get his tape measure and the old codger home owner shot him.
    Well,,That’s what humans get for having homes.
    I still dont get the ” Top of the food chain” thing.
    Say say say. These cattle pastures around here ain’t looking so good. I might start liking fish more, rivers about dried up, aught to be a lot of dead fish for awhile.
    Ahhh lifevis good.

      • The worst kind, a humble-braggart.

        What a Possum life. No rent to pay, free groceries in the dumpster, only worry is crossing the country road late at night.

        I wonder if I can get a prehensile tail surgically-implanted so I can dangle from a tree branch…

        • If you just think you are/want to be a possum that’s good enough for the progs to force it on the world for acceptance/endorsement.

    • “These cattle pastures around here ain’t looking so good. I might start liking fish more, rivers about dried up“

      Yeah, I seen that too, it’s almost like the climate is changing…

      • The climate is always changing. Ice ages. Draughts that last hundreds of years.

        If you are one of those religious fanatics that are convinced man is behind a natural phenomenon then go ahead. Convince China, India, Russia, All of the Americas south of the US and all of Africa to name just a few to stop their polluting ways.

        Let me know how that works out for you.

      • but ONLY inside the crania of the dweebs desparately trying to push this fabrication of “”greenhouse gasses and we’re all gonna roast. Oh wait, got it wron,g that was last year THIS year we’re all gonna freeze. UNLESS, of course, we ALL park our “fossil fuel” tramsportation tools ahd buy all electric. BEFORE they run out of the “rare earth” components to make those nasty heavy metal batteries.

        Hansel and Grete’s tale l is looking more believable every day. Maybe we should just put the witch in the oven and have done with it all.

        Me Imma gonna go hop on my road bike for the rest of the afternoon. No fossil fuel, no nasty batteries.

        • Well,
          Water vapor is a ‘greenhouse gas’

          And we ARE all gunna roast. Just not the way liberal tree huggers think. The Earth WILL be destroyed…by fire…by the sun…in millions of years. Our sun will explode and there is not a single thing we can do to stop it.

        • And now Tionico and Jethro the Janitor are claiming to know more about climate change than the worlds majority of top scientists. It is hard to believe with the amount of information out there in today’s world of computers that we have people like Jethro and Tionico so lazy and indolent that they wish to remain ignorant and tow the far right mornic greed monger line of propaganda. No wonder they never watch anything but Fox News or read Breitbart propaganda because it is geared toward the mentally challenged and the ignorant.

        • If it’s geared towards the mentals no wonder you mention it so much, dacian.

          Science has been weaponized and politicized by big money. Only a total fool can’t see that.

        • Lil D has read that 99% of Political “Scientists” and Food and Nutrition “Scientists” believe in man caused global warmin.

        • And we all know of Dacian’s “Final Solution”. Save the environment by eliminating people.

        • As I have previously related to you climate denier Morons. During the 1960’s I worked with Bill Best who worked for the U.S. Government at an air force base. He stated that because U.S. intelligence knew the Japanese were planning an Arial bombing of the U.S. that the U.S. had to monitor the weather closely. They sent up weather balloons daily with cameras mounted on the balloons and they could see a vast thick cloud of pollution far above the clouds where the rain would not wash it down. They knew then that a greenhouse gas effect was forming and would eventually destroy the earth and most life on it. Since it would cost billions to fix this they just decided to leave it for the next generation to try and fix, if it were even fixable politically and monetarily.

          Now, you retard geeks try and lie your way out of this factual information. In other words this info ties in exactly with what the world’s Scientists were predicting when studying the findings from WWII.

          I might add the 1973 movie “Soylent Green” predicted (using the scientific evidence of the time) exactly what is happening today in regards to the wholesale destruction of the climate. If you never have seen this movie it is well worth watching and very disturbing to say the least as well as being an excellent movie well played by Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson.

        • jerry p. of Canton Ohio. You’ve been doxxed. You were not even in diapers in the 60’s. You seem to have a personal, first hand account of every major event in the last 100 years. And you have never told this story before. First we’re hearing of this lie.

          You are a pathological liar and any story you tell is, at best. suspect. You are mentally ill and need to be supervised.

        • Jethro the Janitor you get the prize for being the forum clown and ignoramus. You are too stupid to know your posts are so idiotic most people laugh at you.

          All of your posts are insulting and moronic. I have never seen even one post of yours with any useful information for anyone.

        • Whine, whine, whine. Get help you uneducated mental case.

          You fascists are normally low iq. With you the ss/antifa got a twofer. Uneducated and mentally ill.

        • As we can see in the endlessly breathless, arrogant, uninformed and indoctrinated Dacian (AKA Albert Hall) there are those out there who proclaim that the “facts” are what the propagandists in the leftist media (95% of all media nowadays) spew out.

          Dacian-types CAN discover that the biggest part of the climate lie is that “99% of top scientists agree “. A real study was undertaken by the professional scientists of the climatologist and geophysicist class a few years ago showed that about 400 of the 33,000 surveyed thought that there was some (or great) truth to the GW story. And many books and papers have been published by the genuine scientific community (not grad students spouting off, or never-worked-in-private-sector “professors”) that totally refute the distorted, suppressed or fabricated raw data and the massively abused climate models pushed by the grant-depending “believers”.

          Dacian, I take it you can read, maybe even with comprehension (a trait missing from leftists), so have a go at “Hot Talk Cold Science” (heavy duty scientific read) or “Global Warming: Alarmists, Skeptics, and Deniers” (layman read) just to start with (out of dozens available).

          There has been no warming since 1999. Sea levels have supposedly been rising by 3mm per year since 2000 (how do you measure with that degree of accuracy aa very dynamic system with satellites which do not have that orbital precision). Sea ice melts every season (so what, it has no effect on ocean levels – put water and ice in glass and note that the level does not change when all the ice is melted). Continental ice is growing in depth (significantly, sometimes by 46 feet) every year, especially in Antarctica. The polar bears has prospered in the past 30 years, more than tripling their population. CO2 has little effect on temps. In the upper atmosphere, it reflects heat to space, while in the lower atmosphere it holds heat – they cancel out.

          Idiots like AOC want to build giant machines that remove all CO2 from the atmosphere. She (and her ilk) have no clue that CO2 is the primary fuel for plant growth, a process which also releases O2 to the air. Yep, remove most CO2, all plant life dies, followed quickly by all surface animal, reptile, and insect life.

          So Dacian, read those two book before spouting more of your collectivist climate nonsense. The truth is out there dude (dudette?).

  10. ROB FOR REPAIRS N COME BACK FOR MORE SHOOT OUT OVER WARRANYT ?

    THANKS ON COMMENTS , TIP WAS JUST RIGHT … BANG BANG …

  11. It really does say something for a Society when you have to, vet the bloody plumber or decorator in case he or she slots you. I doubtbthat you’d have to do that even in Ukraine in the middle of a war. To do so on this side of the pond in the UK would be considered to be very very odd behaviour indeed. I might make a few enquiries as to whether or not they were a competent but that’s about it! Mind you I Have learnt not to employ one of them ‘blokes from the pub’ and go for a reputable company. Not because the ‘bloke down the pub’ might slot or rob me but because they are usually useless and unreliable

    And there you are still imagining that the USA is the freeest society on Earth

    • How is all that unrestrained immigration working out for you Mr Subject of the crown? Going to be burning your furniture to keep warm this winter? Got a plan for eating the neighborhood cats/dogs this winter?

  12. Had a guy who came into my yard mid day from Comcast, without knocking. What was strange is there were no lines in my yard nor was I a customer.

    That ended with me calling Comcast and the cops alike and asking questions about his purpose there. Will admit I was dumb and went out there to ask him wtf he was doing and to gtfo, certainly had the gun in my pocket when I did that one. He just kinda slinked away and thankfully was never heard from again. Talk about suspicious.

    • He was probably a salesman that wanted you to become a customer. I called Comcast after I built my house, and they told me it wasn’t worth it to them to run lines to my house. It was off the road too far. Satellite was difficult to deal with because of the trees around my house. A couple of years later, a salesman shows up asking me to get Comcast. I said I tried and they didn’t want me. He said he’d take care of it. They ran the lines. I’m glad I got it because the internet connection was faster than the phone line.

      Many years before that, a salesman knocked on my apartment door asking if I wanted cable. They do that sort of thing.

      • What was happening around you? More homes built? more people move in the area? It has to be considered where the lines will be run.

  13. I had a plumber come in once to work in my basement. He looked around, saw my safe, saw some cleaning tools and parts laying on my work table, and said “oh good. I guess I don’t have to worry about keeping my pistol hidden here every time I lean over.”
    I called that guy back whenever I had problems.

  14. I was the local “house doctor” for nearly 20 years. Strictly word of mouth, with not even a business card, and I made a decent living at it. I never had any problems with any of my customers (either direction). Most of my former home improvement customers now bring their vehicles to us for auto repairs. I’m saddened to see reports such as this. The world is going down the toilet.

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